Guess What!!!

The rumors are true! Baby Malone #2 is on his way!! And we are soooo excited. It's actually kind of a cool story if you have a minute. The day Tyler was born I kept getting this feeling like somebody was tugging at me asking "my turn?" And I would feel this sadness and anxiousness now and then. Finally I looked at Ty and told him "Ty, I think there is a little brother up there missing you already" and as soon as I said it I knew I was right. It was raining the day he was born and even Jared told him it was raining because Heavenly Father was missing him. And since then I've still gotten little feelings like someone is anxious to come and I kept saying, just a little longer, I can't yet. Well, apparently it is time at last for my next little one to be on his way. I don't know for sure it is a boy, I was sure then, but now with Grandpa Malone up there, I'm pretty sure he is doing all in his power to get another girl in this family. Especially since they will be born in June just like Gpa Malone. I just know if it is not that little boy, I'm going to keep having this little spirit that is just not going to leave me alone until he get's to come down. So, I'm really excited for my baby #2. I wanted my first 2 close, because I feel like kids that are close together help balance each other. A philosophy I probably inherited from my Dad. I remember him telling me how my brothers balanced each other out, and how my sister and I did too. Plus I'm very close to my sister and I hope these to will be (though from what I've felt I think they already are) very close as well. So there you go. My morning (all day) sickness is much worse with this one, but, taking it from my sister, at least then I know the baby is still doing good.

Pumpkin Patch

Okay, prepare for a TON of pictures. Wes and Mickel and their four boys (Wes is Jared's brother) came down for the weekend and we decided to go to this nearby pumpkin patch and take some pictures. Well, me with one fancy camera and Jared with another and this cute little subject for us to take pictures of equaled close to 500 pics (pretty much all of Ty). But these are so worth it. Just take a look.

Ty with Aunt CaitiTristen, Ayden, Kamren
The boys; Tristen, Ayden, Destin, and Kamren (Biggest to smallest)So many pumpkins! I love how he's holding his overall's like a little farmer.
He had a blast exploring.Cool Sunset picsExploring the farmFace painting on DestinMom and TyFamily PictureJust plain cute!Wes, Mickel, Caiti, Torrie, JaredKameron was a bit tired by the end, but his face looked cool.Kamren and TyKameron, Ty, Ayden, Tristen, Destin

There are a bunch more, but the files from Jared's camera are huge and take forever, and this is probably more than enough. Plus I need to go to bed. I've got school in the morning.

PS - I want to get into portrait picture taking, so if anyone is looking for some cheap portraits. Let me know, I'll be glad to have the practice.

Finally formula

So my allergy ridden son has finally found a formula he can eat. Of course it's the expensive one, and I can only buy the prepared bottles because the powdered has corn maltodextrin, but hey, I found one!! I'm going to call the questions/comments # and find out if I can freeze some. So last monday Jared took Ty in for his 9 month apt and the DR says his weight and his head circumference growth have flat-lined and he needs 2-3 bottles of formula a day or his brain will stop developing. Ok, so after my hear attack, and stopping myself several times from calling the DR because I feel the need to defend myself as a good mommy I start doing my homework to finally find a formula he can have. A little trial and error, and we finally find it. Or at least it's going well so far. So well in fact that last monday he weighed 13 lb 10 oz. Then over the weekend the poor kid came down with croup (I swear this kid picks up a new virus every stinking week at the sitters, or maybe from me and my carrier monkey students!) so I took him in to the DR's and he weighed (after exactly 1 week) 14 lb and 4 oz. Holy cow! And so far we are only on 1-2 bottles a day. His head looked bigger to me after just a few days, and it's getting really hard to lift him, he's growing faster than my arm muscles can keep up with. Esp with that stupid car seat. So there you have it. Ty is now a happy formula fed and breast fed baby, though I think I'll keep weaning until he's all formula by Dec. It's made my life, esp at school, so much easier. But, I'm glad I did it. And I'm glad for Dr.'s that scare you into doing what is best for your kid.

9 Months old!

How the time flies. Tyler is now over 9 months old and 27 1/2 inches long. He is getting so big (to me at least, he's still stinkin' tiny compared to every other 9 month baby in the world) However Mousse has more than doubled his size and weight, the dog is going to be HUGE! Good thing he is turning into a really good dog and learning to be really good with Ty. Ty loves messing with him. He especially loves to stick his toys in his face and tempt him to take them because he knows I'll get after Mousse for it. However, I get after Ty for playing with Mousse's toys too. But they are doing pretty good together. The only problem is both get jealous when I play with the other, Ty crys and crawls on me and Mousse just walks onto me and lays all his weight on me so I have to push him off, he's so heavy!
Back to Ty, he's a champ at standing in his crib and now likes to shake the crib and make his moble move. If you look at an earlier post of him standing in his crib, you can see just how much he has grown in just the last few weeks. It must be all the crawling, it's stretching him out.
Then the other day I walked by this picture in a frame and I had to stop. He was soooo tiny, this was at 1 and 1/2 months old and he's pretty much the same size as his bunny bear from Grandpa Willard. So I decided to do a follow up picture to see how much he has grown...


Crazy! It's amazing how much they grow the first few months, and according to the charts Ty is tiny. After I got the picture he was off right away. Here he's trying to crawl up me to get to the camera. I love his little look of concentration. Then here I was feeding him an apple I was eating, and he decided it was his apple, he wanted to hold it, and he didn't feel like sharing anymore.

I forgot to post the pictures from when Ty had his first camping trip. He was so awesome and he loved it. He was especially fascinated by the fire, he just stared and stared. These pics are from the morning after.

Milestones

Not only does Tyler now scoot at lightning speed, he also pulled himself to standing on his own today. Once on a laundry basket I was using to block him from crawling into the bathroom while I was getting ready (gross) and twice now in his crib, such a big boy! However, he's also becoming more needy and wants to be rocked or soothed to sleep. Tonight I have turned over a new leaf of letting him "cry it out". It involved me sitting right by Jared asking "can I go check on him now" and Jared saying "6...5...2 more minutes..." by the second time checking on him he finally settled down to sleep.

First month down

Well, I've made it through the first month of teaching to September. I'm exhausted, my seating charts class lists are in a huge confusing mess on my desk, I couldn't even find some of the ones I needed for today, and thank goodness I saved my lesson plans from last year because 5 minutes before my Kindergartener's walked in I realized I never wrote a lesson for them. I also didnt' get my positive phone calls done for the second year in a row, oops, that deadline came out of nowhere. However, all of that considered, today was really good and I had a great time interacting with my awsome students. All and all, I like being an Elementary music teacher, :)

Food Glorious Food

Tyler is now eating like a pro and loves anything he can eat on his own or sink his teeth into. First we tried a nectarine which he loved scraping his two bottom teeth into. I discovered I have to eat all the skin off first though because he figured out how to chew a piece off without me noticing and I had to dig it out of his mouth when he started choking. But he would hardly let me take it away from him.
Then there are his Mum-mums. I found them at Walmart and he loves them!! They were the first finger foods he got because they're just rice rusks so he's not allergic (that's a feat in itself! no cornsyrup, cornstarch, modified food starch...) and they dissolve really fast in his mouth. Lately he uses his teeth and bites off whole teethmarked chunks instead of just sliming it until it's soft enough to eat.I love those cheeks!
He has started to feed himself with the spoon, but he gets frustrated pretty quick, so I still feed him the baby food, which of course he still enjoys.
He also loves the graduate puffs, it's his new favorite, he is so happy when he gets them! Unfortunately he isn't so happy later on when he gets indegestion. So they are going back on the shelf for a couple weeks then we'll try again to determine if it's an allergy or his stomach adjusting. But he's so darn cute with it stuck to the side of his face!

Two babies and a new house

You never know where life is going to take you. If you had told me a year ago that I would now be living in a house with a yard and a dog, I probably would have laughed at you. But here I am, granted, it is not my house, it is my mother in laws, but she's cool enough to share a bit of it with us. It's 5 bedroom with two master's so it's really perfect for all of us. All of us being Jared, Tyler and I plus Torrie, my mother-in-law, and Caiti, my sister-in-law who is a senior in High School. Plus their 12 year old chocolate lab Cadberry and now, Jared's brand new puppy Mousse. Here is a shot of the kitchen area, which is my favorite part of the new house. It's so big and open. I love it, plus it has this nice island where we usually eat which makes dinners nice and easy. Cadberry (I'm not sure I'm spelling that right) loves the new tile floors, he misses the nice ocean breeze in Oxnard. Though, so do Torrie and Caiti... and me for that matter. Here is the Dining room for Sunday dinners with Bob & Kate and family/friends. This is what sold Torrie on the house, this is the big master bath with the rain shower... and the jetted tub. (Ignore the ugly tile, it's a jetted tub!) And this house came with a cute baby, I think I will keep him. At least until he turns two. And here is the new baby. Mousse came from a breeder down in queen creek and is a cute little chocolate Lab who here is 7 weeks old. Well, he's cute here because he's still snugly and sleepy, not biting your hand off, or chewing your shoes, or making a mess on the floor... I have to say, however, he's proving to be a pretty good dog. He's now 9 weeks old, just two weeks after we got him, and he only bites now and then (my biggest pet peeve) and it's been about a week (knock on wood) since he's pooped in the house and now about 3-4 days since he's peed. And today he stood at the door when he knew it was time for bed so he could go potty first. I didn't even say it was bed time, he wanted to go in his kennel and go to bed. Not bad for 9 weeks old. Though it helps that almost every morning I watch animal planet's "It's me or the Dog" or "Good Dog U" to learn how to train him. It's really helped. And Jared's really good with him!Usually Cadberry ignores him or, when he reaches his breaking point nips at him. Once he even drew blood. So when I saw this where Cadberry let Mousse snuggle up and sleep with him, I had to take a picture. Too cute!This is Mouse today playing with his rope. You can't really tell but he's already about doubled his size.And then there is my #1 baby. Ty is now 71/2 months old (they really do grow so fast) and scoots like a champ (right off the side of the bed today) sits up by himself, can hold himself up while holding onto something (back of a chair, crib, though he can't pull himself up there yet) and can pull himself onto all fours. And as you can see, can sleep with his face smashed into his bed. :) He is also eating solids...... like a pro. Here he is eating his favorite - prunes. He also discovered it makes great finger paint, all over mommy's arm! I was laughing so hard at his mess I had to get the camera. He has it in his ears and nose, even the top and the back of his head. He didn't see any reason mom should clean it all up though, mean mom! All the solid foods is helping along a big growth spurt. His crib is being lowered and his activity bounce raised up a notch. Each day I feed him in the mornings he looks bigger, and he has one little tooth popping out of the bottom of his mouth that he loves to use to bite mommy's chin, yeah. "Who me?" He's also getting really good at talking, the other day I went to get him from his crib and he was babbling and I heard "da-dy" Then today he was having a really hard time sleeping and would start crying and when I walked in I heard (1st time) "ma maaaa" (second time) "maaaa" and (Jared also heard the third time) "mo myyyyy" Yeah, I really think he knows what he is saying and why. Can't be sure though, but I couldn't just pat him and walk out after that, I scooped him right up and snuggled him (and gave him baby tylenol after so many wake ups, something obviously hurts him, he never does this) and he hopefully will stay asleep now. But he sure knows how to melt his mommy's heart. And his Daddy's who was quick to point out that we heard "da-dy" first.